Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal - Eric Blanchttp://links.org.au/taxonomy/term/1032/0
enRosa Luxemburg and the revolutionary party revisitedhttp://links.org.au/rosa-luxemburg-revolutionary-party-revisited
<span style="font-size: 11pt"><p>&nbsp;</p><div style="text-align: center"><img src="https://johnriddell.files.wordpress.com/2018/02/rosa-luxemburg-pic.jpg?w=221&amp;h=221" style="font-size: 0.74em" align="top" height="221" width="221" /></div><p>&nbsp;</p>
By Eric Blanc<p>&nbsp;</p>
March 10, 2018 </span><span style="font-size: 11pt">— </span><i style="font-size: 14.6667px"><a href="/">Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal</a></i><span style="font-size: 14.6667px"> reposted from </span><a href="https://johnriddell.wordpress.com/2018/02/13/rosa-luxemburg-and-the-revolutionary-party-revisited/" style="font-size: 14.6667px">John Riddell's Marxist essays and commentary</a><span style="font-size: 14.6667px"> — </span><span style="font-size: 11pt">This article re-examines Rosa Luxemburg’s approach to the party question by analysing the overlooked experience of her political intervention and organisation in Poland. In particular, I challenge the myth that Rosa Luxemburg advocated a ‘party of the whole class’, ‘spontaneism’ or consistent party democracy. The perspectives and practices of her party – the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL) – demonstrate that there were no steady strategic differences between Luxemburg and V.I. Lenin on the role of a revolutionary party. In practice, the most consequential divergence between their parties was that the Bolsheviks, unlike the SDKPiL, became more effective in mass workers’ struggles during and following the 1905 revolution.<p><a href="http://links.org.au/rosa-luxemburg-revolutionary-party-revisited">read more</a></p>Eric BlancRosa LuxemburgSat, 10 Mar 2018 07:08:38 -0500fred5218 at http://links.org.auRosa Luxemburg’s bloc with the SPD bureaucracyhttp://links.org.au/rosa-luxemburg-bloc-spd-bureaucracy
<span style="font-size: 11pt"><p>&nbsp;</p><div style="text-align: center"><img src="https://johnriddell.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/rosa-luxemburg-2.jpg" height="308" width="242" /></div><p>&nbsp;</p>
By <b>Eric Blanc</b><p>&nbsp;</p>
February 3. 2018 — </span><i style="font-size: 14.6667px"><a href="/">Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal</a></i><span style="font-size: 14.6667px"> reposted from </span><a href="https://johnriddell.wordpress.com/2018/01/15/fruits-and-perils-of-the-bloc-within/" style="font-size: 14.6667px">John Riddell's Marxist Essays and Commentary website</a><span style="font-size: 14.6667px"> — Rosa Luxemburg’s contributions to the revolutionary movement and the development of Marxism are undeniably important. Yet many writers today uncritically romanticise Luxemburg as a humanistic, undogmatic, and democratic alternative to Social Democracy, Leninism, and/or Stalinism. Sobhanlal Datta Gupta, for example, argues that Luxemburg ‘inaugurated the heritage of an alternative understanding of Marxism with a revolutionary humanist face, as distinct from liberalism, social democratic revisionism as well as Stalinist authoritarianism. It is through the lens of Rosa Luxemburg that it is possible to understand what went wrong with Soviet socialism and how we can reposition our understanding of socialism in the twenty-first century.’[1]<p>&nbsp;</p><p><a href="http://links.org.au/rosa-luxemburg-bloc-spd-bureaucracy">read more</a></p>Eric BlancRosa LuxemburgFri, 02 Feb 2018 08:45:07 -0500fred5194 at http://links.org.auOctober 1917 and its relevance: A discussion with China Miévillehttp://links.org.au/october-1917-relevance-china-mieville-eric-blanc
<span style="font-size: 11pt"><p>&nbsp;</p><div style="text-align: center"><img src="http://animalfarmgoedu.weebly.com/uploads/1/8/9/2/18928081/543369744_orig.jpg?375" style="font-size: 0.74em" align="top" height="274" width="432" /></div><p>&nbsp;</p><b>
Eric Blanc</b> interviews <b>China Mi</b></span><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px"><b>é</b></span><span style="font-size: 11pt"><b>ville</b><p>&nbsp;</p>
July 25, 2017 — <a href="/" style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px"><i>Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal</i></a><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px"> reposted from </span><a href="http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/blog/october-and-its-relevance-discussion-with-china-mieville" style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px">Historical Materialism</a><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px"> with the author's permission — For those interested in engaging with the history of the Russian Revolution in the hope of more effectively challenging capitalism, a tension between the universal and the particular looms large. The difficulty that inevitably arises is how to disentangle what was historically specific about Russia 1917 and Bolshevism from what might reflect a more generalised tendency. To quote award-winning author China Miéville’s recent <i>October: The Story of the Russian Revolution </i>(Verso): ‘This was Russia’s revolution, certainly, but it belonged and belongs to others, too. It could be ours. If its sentences are still unfinished, it is up to us to finish them.’<p>&nbsp;</p><p><a href="http://links.org.au/october-1917-relevance-china-mieville-eric-blanc">read more</a></p>Eric BlancRussian RevolutionTue, 25 Jul 2017 08:16:21 -0400fred5113 at http://links.org.auFinland’s forgotten revolutionhttp://links.org.au/finland-forgotten-revolution-russian-empire-tsarism-independence-general-strike
<span style="font-size: 11pt"><p>&nbsp;</p><div style="text-align: center"><img src="https://images.jacobinmag.com/2017/05/09145623/helsinki.png" width="393" height="275" align="top" style="font-size: 0.74em" /></div><p>&nbsp;</p>
<center><i>Crowds during the general strike in Helsinki, Finland, 1905. </i></center><p>&nbsp;</p>
By <b>Eric Blanc</b><p>&nbsp;</p>
June 4, 2017 </span><span style="font-size: 11pt">— <a href="http://links.org.au"><i>Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal</i></a> reposted from </span><span style="font-size: 11pt"><span style="font-size: 11pt"><a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/05/finland-revolution-russian-empire-tsarism-independence-general-strike">Jacobin</a> with the author's permission </span>— </span><span style="font-size: 11pt">In the past century, histories of the 1917 revolution have usually focused on Petrograd and Russian socialists. But the Russian empire was predominantly made up of non-Russians — and the upheavals in the imperial periphery were often just as explosive as in the center.<p>&nbsp;</p>
Tsarism’s overthrow in February 1917 unleashed a revolutionary wave that immediately engulfed all of Russia. Perhaps the most exceptional of these insurgencies was the Finnish Revolution, which one scholar has called “Europe’s most clear-cut class war in the twentieth century.”<p>&nbsp;</p></span><p><a href="http://links.org.au/finland-forgotten-revolution-russian-empire-tsarism-independence-general-strike">read more</a></p>Eric BlancFinlandSun, 04 Jun 2017 11:33:06 -0400fred5074 at http://links.org.auA revolutionary line of march: ‘Old Bolshevism’ in early 1917 re-examinedhttp://links.org.au/a-revolutionary-line-of-march-old-bolshevism-re-examined
<span style="font-size: 11pt"><div style="text-align: center"> </div><div style="text-align: center"><img width="350" height="224" src="http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/sites/default/files/images/blog/2017-03/kamenev%20reading%20pravda.jpg" /></div><div align="center"><i>
Lev Kamenev reading </i>Pravda</div><div align="left"> <p>March 31, 2017 <span style="font-size: 11pt"><span style="font-size: 11pt">— <a href="http://links.org.au"><i>Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal</i></a> reposted from <a href="http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/blog/revolutionary-line-march-old-bolshevism-early-1917-re-examined"> Historical Materialism</a> — </span></span>In the hundred years since the overthrow of Tsarism, there has been a
near consensus among socialists and scholars that Bolshevism underwent a
strategic rupture in early 1917. According to this account, the
Bolsheviks supported the liberal Provisional Government until Vladimir
Lenin returned to Russia in April and veered the party in a radical new
direction by calling for socialist revolution and soviet power.</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Through a re-examination of Bolshevik politics in March 1917, the
following article demonstrates that the prevailing story is historically
inaccurate and has distorted our understanding of how and why the
Bolsheviks eventually came to lead the Russian Revolution.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><a href="http://links.org.au/a-revolutionary-line-of-march-old-bolshevism-re-examined">read more</a></p>BolsheviksEric BlancLeninRussian RevolutionFri, 31 Mar 2017 00:52:34 -0400fred5018 at http://links.org.auBefore Lenin: Bolshevik theory and practice in February 1917 revisitedhttp://links.org.au/Before-Lenin-Bolshevik-theory-practice-February-1917-revisited
<span style="font-size: 11pt"><div style="text-align: center"> </div><div style="text-align: center"><img src="http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/sites/default/files/images/blog/2017-02/1917%20feb%2023%20putilov%20workers.jpg" height="250" width="384" /></div><div style="text-align: center"><i>Petrograd protesters on 23 February</i></div><div style="text-align: center"> </div><p>
By <b>Eric Blanc</b></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><span style="font-size: 11pt">March 1, 2017 — <a href="http://links.org.au"><i>Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal</i></a> reposted from <a href="http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/blog/before-lenin-bolshevik-theory-and-practice-february-1917-revisited">Historical Materialism</a> —</span> Assessing Bolshevik policy before Lenin’s return to Russia in April
1917 has long been one of the most heated historiographic controversies
in the socialist movement. <p><a href="http://links.org.au/Before-Lenin-Bolshevik-theory-practice-February-1917-revisited">read more</a></p>BolsheviksEric BlancRussiaRussian RevolutionTue, 28 Feb 2017 10:24:44 -0500fred4987 at http://links.org.au